Bird's Nest

This is not a print-on-demand or facsimile copy but a hardcover book published with a dust jacket price of $3.50 by Farrar, Straus and Young, 101 Fifth Ave., New York 3, with a stated First Printing of 1954. Printed by American Book-Stratford Press, Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 54-9352. Elizabeth is a demure twenty-three-year-old wiling her life away at a dull museum job, living with her neurotic aunt, and subsisting off her dead mother's inheritance. When Elizabeth begins to suffer terrible migraines and backaches, her aunt takes her to the doctor, then to a psychiatrist. But slowly, and with Jackson's characteristic chill, we learn that Elizabeth is not just one girl-but four separate, self-destructive personalities. The Bird's Nest, Jackson's third novel, develops hallmarks of the horror master's most unsettling work: tormented heroines, riveting familial mysteries, and a disquieting vision inside the human mind.